Incorporating Cultural Competence into Program Priorities: States

Diana Denboba: Jennifer Cernoch is the Executive Director of Family Voices. How many of you have heard of Family Voices? Okay, so let’s please go into it (inaudible) of family and professional advocating children with special health care needs. Jennifer also is the Project Director of Health Care Matters (inaudible) managed care (inaudible) education programs, designed for consumers with disabilities in Medicaid (inaudible). She has a doctorate from John F. Kennedy Research Institute at Peabody College of Vanderbilt University. We also have representing our state programs, Rick Horrell who is our A/V person extraordinaire. He’s also the Chief of Missouri Department of health and Senior Services, Division of Community Health, Special Health Care Needs in Jefferson City, Missouri. Rick has been a Health Program Manager, he’s been a Dental Health Consultant, and he’s also been on faculty at the School of Medicine, University of Missouri, Columbia Health Management and Informatix?

Rick Horrell: Yes.

Dianne: Informatix. Very impressive.

Rick Horrell: Thank you.

Dianne : And last but not least, we have Wimpy Jones, who is the Director of Children’s Special Health Care Needs Project with The National Center for Cultural Competence at Georgetown University. She is a research instructor in the Department of Pediatrics at Georgetown. She’s been associated with Georgetown’s University Center of Excellence for the past eight years. She’s an educator and social worker, specializing in advocacy support and training of individual families (inaudible) language, and also families with developmental, educational, and emotional disabilities. So I would like to begin our program. We’re, we can’t, if we close the door, it locks. So--

Unidentified Speaker: I’ll close these doors.

Dianne: Close it. Is there a way we can close it and it won’t lock?

Unidentified Speaker: Yeah, I (inaudible).

Dianne: Okay. Thank you. So I will turn the program over to Wendy.